RESIDUE

In Harrison’s speculative mystery, a young woman anxiously searches for her missing sister in a disaster-struck city with the help of a jaded detective.

Six months after a catastrophic explosion destroyed a downtown New York nightclub, a huge swath of the city is still designated a Quarantine Zone, ostensibly because of biological or chemical contamination from a secret military facility beneath the club. The QZ is heavily guarded and under continuous drone surveillance, and incidents of unexplained, unprovoked violence multiply; a mysterious blogger, Ominosity, spreads a sinister warning that “things are not under control.” In this dismal setting, a young woman named Miki Preston searches for her missing sister, Jennifer, a talented photojournalist. Miki keeps glimpsing phantom faces that seem to be screaming, but which vanish upon second glance. She sees the same shadows in the backgrounds of Jennifer’s last photos, taken at the scenes of suicides and murders; Jennifer saved the images in a folder labeled “In Case Something Happens To Me.” Miki tries to convince world-weary police Detective Levi Mathis to help her find Jennifer, but he warns her off. Mathis is looking for answers of his own; his teenage daughter was killed in the nightclub blast, and he suspects that authorities are using the QZ to cover up criminal activity. Harrison weaves in subplots involving a colorful pair of street kids, elements of Mathis’ past, mobsters, clandestine psychological experiments, and covert intelligence to effectively create an ominous world. The setting is a gritty New York City, full of dark alleys and dank tunnels. However, its geography will be confusing to readers familiar with the real-life city; for example, 10th Avenue and 24th Street is in the Chelsea neighborhood, not Soho, and 7th Avenue is west of 8th Street, not north of it. The story timeframe is also distractingly unclear; there’s a passing reference to “Bloomberg’s nanny campaign,” for instance, and people have smartphones, but don’t seem to use them to communicate. Still, the writing flows quickly, despite occasional repetitions, and the ending hints at the possibility of a sequel.

A supernatural thriller with an intriguing premise but uneven execution.